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How is Windows Virtual Desktop Optimized for Office 365?

Microsoft says Windows Virtual Desktop is a “desktop optimized for Office 365.” What does that phrase mean?

In simple terms, Windows Virtual Desktop allows us to combine familiar productivity tools (Word, Excel, etc.), hosted email and a secure workspace all in the same cloud environment. In the past, vendors have had to build out the supporting infrastructure and connectors to put these three elements together. For example, to host a workspace, virtual machines were created to host the sessions, but these environments also required gateways, networking components, firewalls and software components for anti-virus, patching and monitoring. In addition, the user typically needed to remember multiple usernames and password to access the workspace and their Office applications or email.

By contrast, Windows Virtual Desktop hosted on Azure provides most of the supporting components and services required to host a workspace. Gateways – both RDP and HTML5 – are shared Azure services, and network access is provided by the Azure infrastructure. Many of the required components are also available – built in monitoring, multi-site backup and recovery, patching and anti-malware agents. Beyond support for the infrastructure, the Windows Virtual Desktop provides these additional features:

1. True Windows 10 Virtual Machines – each VM can support either a single user or multiple users running Windows 10 Enterprise. This means that any application certified for Windows will work on the Win 10 machine.

2. One username and password to log into a workspace, office and email. This “single identity” also means that any files created and stored in a OneDrive folder will be accessible from both a workspace and personal devices.

3. Office applications are tuned for performance in the Windows 10 workspace environment. This means faster file and email searching.
Windows Virtual Desktop is a great step in the direction of an “All in One” workspace experience. And with the power of additional Azure services and products, the modern business can move the end user component of their technology stack to the cloud.

Interested in Windows Virtual Desktop to support your End User Computing Environment? Contact us at CloudJumper for more information. Hello@cloudjumper.com or (844) 645-6789 and follow us on social media: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn.